Dell says Apple’s iPad is bad for enterprise customers

The fight for tablet market supremacy heated up this week with Dell’s head of global marketing for enterprises and public organizations Andy Lark laying out a few harsh words for Apple and its uppity iPad tablet PC.

While speaking with CIO Australia this week, Lark explained that the iPad doesn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell in the enterprise market. Sure, it might be the number one tablet used by enterprise customers. But in the end, Apple’s closed system and high prices will nail shut its coffin.

“I couldn’t be happier that Apple has created a market and built up enthusiasm but longer term, open, capable and affordable will win, not closed, high price and proprietary,” Lark told CIO Australia. “[Apple has] done a really nice job, they’ve got a great product, but the challenge they’ve got is that already Android is outpacing them.

“Apple is great if you’ve got a lot of money and live on an island. It’s not so great if you have to exist in a diverse, open, connected enterprise; simple things become quite complex.”

As Lark explains, Dell’s “considered approach” to the enterprise tablet market is far superior to Apple’s because Dell understands the needs of those customers, who are looking to save as much money as possible. Dell does this by offering tablets based on either Widows 7 or Android 3.0 Honeycomb. Apple’s device, says Lark, is just too expensive.

“An iPad with a keyboard, a mouse and a case [means] you’ll be at $1500 or $1600; that’s double of what you’re paying,” Lark said. “That’s not feasible.”

Unfortunately for Lark (and Dell), the cost of an iPad 2 — even the most expensive model — plus all the peripherals mentioned costs far less than the above estimates.

As Joshua Schnell at Macgasm points out, the cost of the least expensive iPad 2 model (which comes with 16GB of storage, and only supports Wi-Fi connectivity, for the price of $499) plus a wireless keyboard, iPad Dock and the new iPad Smart Cover all adds up to $666.00. Even for the most expensive iPad, which runs $829.00 by itself, the total only comes to $996.

So either Lark is getting severely ripped-off by whatever Apple store employee helped him purchase his iPad, or he’s just pulling fake numbers off the top of his head to make his company look better. Either way, it doesn’t bode well for Dell’s tablet future.

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